


The Case of Me Loving You

by fetchmeabook



Series: Right Here With You [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Talking Shit Out, in this house we acknowledge Missy, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:00:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25138855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fetchmeabook/pseuds/fetchmeabook
Summary: One morning while the Doctor is still healing from her imprisonment by the Judoon, her and the Master actually sit down and talk about emotions and things.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Series: Right Here With You [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820986
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31





	The Case of Me Loving You

The Master had been with the Doctor aboard the Tardis for the last three weeks. In that time, he had been careful and caring towards the Doctor, never trying to overstep boundaries or do anything that might cause her more harm. He had been attentive towards her in ways she hadn’t seen in several thousand years. Her tenth self, at least the tenth self she knew, had been so willing to love and help the Master that it had only brought her more pain at his rejection. When her twelfth had encountered Missy, the Doctor had wanted to be over joyed but knew that she had to be reserved lest emotions get in the way again. The Doctor was glad her eleventh self hadn’t encountered the Master, or at least hadn’t for long, as he would have thoroughly broken at the thought of the Master turning against him. He had found a family that had managed to bring light to what he thought was unending darkness, a second found family for him but the Master would always be his first.

That morning, or what the Tardis had disguised as morning, the Doctor found herself sat slightly upright in bed with a request not to move. While the Master hadn’t directly ordered her to stay in bed, she had grown used to him asking her to stay in bed so to not aggravate her healing injuries anymore. It was in those hours where she was just waking up and the Master had already left not long before that she had come to enjoy the silence; there was the added benefit that the Doctor now knew he was an excellent cook and would be bringing her breakfast in bed as he always did. The first few times she had asked that he stay with her while she fell asleep, and he had complied with her wishes, she hadn’t expected him to stay the night. But, he had stayed every time she asked him to and had even taken to staying once she had stopped. Now the Doctor would wake to find that the spot beside her was vacant but still warm, she knew he’d be back soon.

It was in those quiet waking hours that the Doctor would find herself slowly lost to thought and memory. She knew he would leave out those doors one day and never return the same man he was right now. He had been kind in ways she hadn’t seen in thousands of years and she knew that that sort of attitude could never last with the Master. With him here, she let her mind wander back to a young Theta and Koschei and how they had envisioned their future together. They had been young, well Koschei had been and the Doctor would never know how old “young Theta” was now, and hopelessly in love with one another. Their friends had endlessly teased them for pinning over the other until the realized that it was no longer just pinning and they were trying to figure out how to act around each other once their emotions had been brought to light. They had been supportive in ways that the older Timelords wouldn’t have been, and they had even planned a future for themselves. That future would never come to fruition however. But, right now, they were in as close to that dream future as they had ever managed. No chaos, no harm, just calm and love between them once more. Neither of them had thought or spoken their love yet, but they both knew it was there.

The Doctor watched the door with partially lidded eyes, she knew it wouldn’t be long before he returned. A moment later the door opened and it seemed that the Master was currently turned away from her. She could see the tray in hand. When he turned to face her the door softly closed behind him. He walked over to the side of the bed he had taken up as his own and set the tray atop the table that always seemed to be vacant, the Doctor thought that maybe the table was for the tray he always brought in.

“Morning,” he said softly as he reclaimed his spot next to her. Before grabbing any of the food from the tray he helped her sit upright.

“Hello,” in the mornings the Doctor would always greet the Master with a hello once she saw him. It was still an acknowledgement to herself that he had stayed with her and was still there, it wasn’t something she’d ever find herself doing with any companion she’d ever taken on.

The Master moved back to grab the tray and set it between them. Like always, the food was of a rather light fare. Sometime in that first week, in one of the Doctor’s few moments of clarity, she had asked why he had been bringing her light foods among other questions. His reasoning had been that lighter foods would be better on her stomach during the healing process and that he thought the Judoon wouldn’t have given her substantial meals during her imprisonment so heavier foods would do more harm than good. That had been the only one of her questions she had asked him that he answered, it had at least been the only one she was coherent enough to hear the answer of.

The Doctor reached for a bowl of what appeared to be a reddish broth with some sort of vegetable in it, from the smell of it she recognized it as a favorite of hers from her youth on Gallifrey. It was a summer soup that when Koschei had heard it was her favorite he had tried to learn to make, that version of himself couldn’t cook to save his life. This version however could cook, it tasted better than she remembered it being. There was something about the combination of smell and taste that when the Doctor leaned her head back with her eyes closed she could fool herself into thinking she was back on Gallifrey. She could fool herself that she had been running around with Koschei all day on the slopes of Mount Perdition or in the wide open fields that surrounded the Citadel and the Academy. If she fell into her memories just enough, she could almost hear the excited shrieks of children- herself and Koschei- as they chased each other before they collapsed to the ground with little energy left.

When she opened her eyes again, she hadn’t been bothered to keep track of how long they had been close, she saw the Master mask his emotions once more from the corner of her eye. In that split second before he concealed them, the Doctor saw the smallest sliver of a fond smile and the tail end of a loving look in his eyes. At the moment their relationship was too fragile, it had been for a long time, to even come close to admitting that they might still love each other. What they didn’t say to one another in words they said in actions instead.

A few days back, maybe even a week, he had started asking her how she was feeling in the mornings, at night, and even throughout the day. It still caught her off guard at times. “Better, my ribs are still aching but that’s to be expected,” she told him.

She could hear in his voice that he was trying to mentally separate himself from the situation, it wasn’t working out in his favor. “That will dull as they heal, should be better in a few more weeks.” The Doctor had refused to use any of her regeneration energy to heal herself. Her body was already strained from trying to heal, there was no need to risk anything by using said energy before her body could safely handle it. A few times she had caught the Master trying to go against her wishes and using his own to speed up her healing process. He wouldn’t make it far enough to do anything once she caught him.

He watched as she put down her bowl to grab one of the pieces of bread instead. In moments like these the Master felt more conflicted then he ever had in all his lives. He felt the persona he was used to, the Master, fading away back into the deepest recesses of his mind but the tender moments between him and the Doctor weren’t open enough for Koschei to comeback fully. After that first week he’d given up on himself not falling for his friend again. Koschei would have hated to see what the Master had done, but neither of them were in control of his body and mind. Right now, for the first time in so many years, the Doctor was letting him do what he wanted-- just be with her—and he didn’t care if it was the Master or Koschei that controlled his actions now. He laid the back of his hand across her forehead to make sure she wasn’t running yet another fever, four in just three weeks was more than enough for her next six lifetimes. She, with her hands now in her lap holding her bread roll, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. Every morning there was some little thing that the Doctor did that he had to remind himself that he was watching over her as she healed and that now was not a good time to kiss her.

While he had ate with her, the Master mostly watched the Doctor instead. The Master tried to tell himself that it was to make sure she was alright and it was not because he was memorizing every contour of her face like he had with every other incarnation of her, but sometimes even the littlest lies hurt. He almost didn’t hear her speaking to him.

“Kosch?” She had taken to calling him. It too was painful to say Koschei but it also reinforced the idea within himself that the Master was retreating into him and a careful, tender individual had started to come out of the woodworks.

“Huh?” He asked as he was unsure if she had said anything else. Written across her face was a question that he could tell she didn’t wish to voice right now but still wished to have an answer to.

_Why are you still here?_

He had seen her, in this body at least, have that same question written across her face before. Even then it was still painful to see, even more so to answer.

She was quiet when she actually voiced the question for the first time, if he hadn’t already have known what it was he might have had to ask her to repeat it. He knew she wouldn’t’ve however. “Why are you still here?”

Before answering he handed her another roll, she always ate two in the mornings, before moving the tray back to the table. He sat so that he was facing her. Just sitting next to her wouldn’t do for this. Late nights in the vault, her former self and Missy would have conversations that tended to leach answers directly from the soul. No matter what they’d always be each other and, more often than not, would end up with their foreheads pressed together in solidarity that no matter what they were there for each other. The Doctor shifted slightly but winced in pain as a sharp pain shot through her ribs after moving the wrong way. Across from her, her longtime friend and once lover helped her move back to where she was sitting so to not cause any more pain.

There was a long, silent pause that settled over the pair. She watched as he took a deep breath before answering her. “Neither of us is particularly good at displaying affection, much less for one another. I’m here because I still care and I hate seeing you hurt despite how many times I’ve hurt you. I hated being in that vault while you could still galivant across the universe without me but I stayed because I still cared and, deny it or not, but you always came back to me. For the first time since we were at the Academy you’d come back to me and would let me dote on you. We had a strange relationship then, jailer and jailee, but I cared for you enough to stay.” He stopped to collect his thoughts once more. In the past three weeks neither one had brought up what had happened in those final moments of their previous regenerations. But, if he was willingly being open and vulnerable to her then he thought that he might as well.

The Doctor had yet to either replace her star earing or put a new one in its place but she had taken to keeping her hair back behind that ear as though to display the lack of jewelry. He reached forward and moved her hair back behind her ear. “I was coming back,” he started but was unsure how to continue. Luckily, the Doctor didn’t try to but in with her own thoughts. All was quiet while he thought of what to say. “Saxon didn’t remember but I did, I was coming back.” With more than one incarnation of an individual in one place, it would only be the elder version that remember while the younger would forget in order to preserve the timeline. “He shot me in the back after I told him, I stabbed him first. He refused to believe that I’d ever side with you, still thought you’d abandoned me to the timelords after the whole ‘master race’ incident. But I was coming back because for the first time in all my lives since leaving Gallifrey I wanted to be a better person and you were willing to be there with me. I wouldn’t have liked to have kept up that almost clinical relationship we had but I would have if that meant at the end of it all you’d see me for me. Someone who cared for you.” The Doctor was the brave one and he had yet to gain enough courage to say that he loved her. “But the hope that maybe you had seen me for me after I had regenerated died out. I don’t remember how I managed to get off that ship, all I remember is trying to find you. I was coming back to you, no matter what I always end up coming back to you but in the one moment I needed you to be there and to know that I cared,” his voice broke. The Doctor watched as his emotions boiled over and the pain of that moment painted itself a thousand times over across his whole body. She knew that the Master was a masterful manipulator and liar, but she knew that when he let emotions involve themselves he was incapable of either. For the first time since his days in the vault, the Doctor knew he was being honest with her.

The silence between them was long and cold. Emotions had finally gotten the better of the Master, tears had yet to fall on his face but they were welling up in his eyes.

It was the Doctor that finally broke it. “I didn’t know. I should have believed in you, but I didn’t know. Please, I didn’t know,” she wasn’t quite sure why she said please or when they had gotten closer. They were within a breath’s distance of one another. The bread was left abandoned in her lap as the Doctor reached up with one hand to cup the Master’s face like he had for her so many times while she was in and out of the med bay. “I thought that you had gone with him or that the cybermen had gotten to you and I’d actually lost you this time. I woke up on the floor of my Tardis, without knowing how I got there, at the memory of your voice. Please, Kosch, I didn’t know. I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” It sent a pain through her rib cage but, the Doctor leaned forward and rested her head against his. From this angle she could see, even more clearly, just how open and vulnerable their conversation had left the Master. She figured he could see that open vulnerability in her as well. Her other hand crept up to frame the other side of his face.

She could hear him beg of her, in a broke and tear laden voice just barely above a whisper, “Please don’t send me away. I’ll turn good, I’ll be good.” Her hearts shattered into a million billion little pieces. She had told him time and time again that she was willing to help him and, in a way, she had betrayed him just as many times as he had her. No more.

His eyes were closed but she still felt like they were watching her. It was in quiet tones that she spoke to him, her friend and maybe lover once more, of a way to undo the wrongs the universe had inflicted on him that he attempted to retaliate against. “You could be so wonderful,” once she started, everything came back to her. The Doctor had told the Master this very same thing before but she did not care. “You’re a genius. You’re stone cold brilliant, you are. I swear you are. You’re beautiful,” in the past she had told him that he had the capacity to be beautiful but he wasn’t yet. But, the Doctor had kept watch over Missy in the vault for seventy years and she had been willing to change. This incarnation that followed Missy and if the last few minutes and weeks were to tell her anything, this Master was willing to change as well. Maybe not admit any wrong doings yet but he seemed willing to pick up where Missy had fell off. “We could travel the stars,” there was so much hope in that statement and they both knew it. “I’ll help in any way I can.” The Doctor knew that there had to be groups out in the universe that were trying to hunt him down right this very moment. Right now, he was exposed in a way that he hadn’t shown anyone, much less the Doctor, in thousands of years. Right now, neither cared about anyone other than each other. As much as it had hurt him, and also her, in the past, neither one gave a damn about the idea of the Doctor being the Timeless Child. Right now, they were just them as they had always known one another to be, their lives began eight years before they had met at the Academy and that was all that mattered. “Stay, you’re safe here.”

They were both broken souls with a tragic history between them. Neither one was emotionally sound enough to tell the other that they loved them nor in the right frame of mind to pose the idea of a relationship beyond a close and caring friendship. There was heartbreak and betrayal that bookended their meetings but in the moment none of that mattered. She knew he wouldn’t be the one to move simply out of fear of being rejected. In one fluid movement, albeit a slightly painful one, the Doctor leaned the short distance over to kiss him. It was a bad idea, but when had either of them been known to have good ones?

The Doctor knew that he was probably short circuiting mentally at the moment, he had been so careful around her that maybe she was overstepping boundaries. She was about to pull back when he kissed her back and one of his hands came up to the back of her head. Later on, neither one would come to an agreement as to which one deepened the kiss. They could agree on one thing, the Master had leaned into it which had led to the Doctor being pressed up against the headboard of the bed. She had winced through the kiss and her ribs decided to control her actions yet again. The Master pulled back almost immediately, she could see in his face that he thought that it was something that he had done that had caused the pained sound.

For the first time since before her capture by the Judoon, the Doctor smiled. “That wasn’t because of you, love.” She knew he’d melt under the pet name but she didn’t give him the chance to as she pulled him closer to kiss him again.

**Author's Note:**

> We're in a pandemic, summer classes have started up, and I just need to have a distraction.


End file.
